The Other Drone War: Iran and Its Proxies Utilizing UAVs

Often, the deployment of drones in combat has been associated with modern Western countries. The U.S. “drone war” against al-Qaeda leaders in Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, and Libya has become a common facet to reporting military affairs in the Middle East. However, another Middle Eastern “drone war” has been growing. This war is part of the broader conflict involving Iran, Israel, and the United States, now taking on an unmanned approach — pitting Iran and its proxies using drone aircraft against their enemies, and also against Western drones.

This front of the Iran vs. Western powers conflict received new attention following the October 6 intrusion of a UAV into Israeli airspace. Coinciding with the 39th anniversary of the start of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the UAV emerged from somewhere over the Mediterranean (near the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip) and was eventually shot down by the Israel Air Force. While multiple reports stated the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) had “mysterious origins,” most analysts concluded it was an Iranian or Lebanese Hezbollah-run operation. One Israeli analyst told CNN, “We know it originated in Lebanon.” Later, the deputy commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) confirmed his country’s involvement, saying the drone proved Israel’s Iron Dome air-defense system “does not work.” On October 11, Lebanese Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah claimed full-responsibility, noting in a speech, “The drone managed to arrive in an area close to the Dimona [nuclear] plant”.

This would not be the first time Iran or its proxies have utilized UAV technology against Israel. In 2004 — with Iranian assistance — Lebanese Hezbollah launched the relatively simple Mirsad I drone into Israel. Flying around Israeli airspace for only a few minutes, the flight was described by regional security analyst Ze’ev Schiff as a “clear-cut case of aggression.” In November 2005, Lebanese Hezbollah launched another UAV into Israel. Due to the small size of Mirsad I UAVs, the Israelis had trouble detecting them. Demonstrating the 2005 UAV flight’s propaganda value, one Hezbollah parliamentarian noted:

The Israeli military missed it. This is a victory not only for Hezbollah, but also for Lebanon as a whole. From weakness, we are creating strength.

Hinting at the drone’s other potential uses, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said, “You can load the Mirsad plane with a quantity of explosive ranging from 40 to 50 kilos and send it to its target.” That is almost exactly what Hezbollah did in 2006. During the 2006 Hezbollah-Israel War, Lebanese Hezbollah launched a mixture of armed and unarmed drones. In total, four Iranian-supplied UAVs were destroyed by the Israelis.

Six years later, sources told the Lebanese Daily Star that Hezbollah attempted to launch another drone in the Bekaa Valley, only to have the craft burst into flames and crash.

Israel was not alone in dealing with Iranian drone penetration. In February 2009, American fighter jets shot down an Iranian drone which had flown around 80 miles inside Iraqi territory.

Iran has also publicized UAVs they have built. In 2009, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps-run Fars News reported that Farnas Aerospace Company was planning on opening a UAV mass-production plant. According to Reuters, Iran has also exported its UAV technology to Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela.

By 2010 Iran had produced its first native drone, the Karrar. The Iranians claimed the Karrar could fly 600 miles and drop around 500 pounds of bombs. On September 25, Iran revealed the domestically produced medium altitude Shahed-129 UAV. The aircraft appeared to share many outward characteristics with the U.S. Predator drone, but was most likely based on a captured Israeli design. The Iranians reported the Shahed-129 has the ability to fly for 24 hours straight and has a range of 1,250 miles — potentially putting Israel in its range.

Since technologically advanced drones give Western powers a tactical and strategic intelligence advantage, the Iranians have also started their own counter-drone campaign. In 2009, Kata’ib Hezbollah (KH), the Iraqi version of Lebanese Hezbollah and an Iranian proxy, hacked into U.S. drones and watched the UAV’s video feeds. Earlier in 2008, the group organized a plan to assassinate President Obama when he toured Baghdad. The footage KH took of Obama’s convoy appeared to look down from the air, possibly indicating the group had hacked into a U.S. drone.

Lebanese Hezbollah claims they have the ability to tap into Israeli UAV feeds going back to the late 1990s. According to the Hezbollah leaders, their best success in hacking an Israeli UAV came in 1997 during an ambush which became known as the “Shayetet catastrophe.” During the fighting, 11 Israeli naval commandos were killed by Hezbollah. Later in 2010, the IDF confirmed Lebanese Hezbollah had hacked into their drones during the ambush. This subsequently led the IDF to encrypt their UAVs.

Nevertheless, by the fall of 2011 there were still reports that Hezbollah could electronically counter Israeli drones. In one case, UNIFIL had charted an Israeli drone flying near the Hezbollah-controlled southern-Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil, only to have the aircraft disappear from their radar. No wreckage was found and it was reported the Israeli UAV may have been carted away by Hezbollah personnel.

It appears likely that Iranian forces and their allies will continue to use drones as examples of their own technological prowess vis a vis the West. Thus far, they have served Tehran’s propaganda purposes and act as cheap force multipliers to keep technologically advanced states on edge. Just as Lebanese Hezbollah utilized asymmetric tactics against the sophisticated IDF, a low-cost drone loaded with 30 kilograms of explosives acts in the same way. The reaction to a penetration by an Iranian drone also serves a strategic interest by forcing Tehran’s foes to spend more money on defenses.

Since unmanned aircraft serve as a mainstay for Western militaries, Iran’s efforts to counter the advanced Western UAV technology will also continue. Iran’s ability or alleged ability to hack into and to bring down American and Israeli UAVs also assists in their struggle to brand themselves as just as technologically proficient as any Western power.

It remains clear that Iran’s drone tactics will be a continuing presence in the Middle East and will continue to be a medium used to spark crises.

Phillip Smyth travels regularly to the Middle East and lived in Lebanon. He has written for The American Spectator, The Daily Caller, Haaretz, National Review Online, NOW Lebanon, the MERIA Journal, and the Counterterrorism Blog. You can follow Phillip on Twitter: @PhillipSmyth

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24 Comments, 12 Threads

The big point missed in this discussion is very clear – from the moment the drone neared Israeli airspace, the IDF was waging a ‘cyber war’ with its handlers. In other words, while the drone had several missions, its chief one was to collect intelligence, and then to check Israeli response time.

Now, if one follows the saga closely, it becomes clear that the drone was ‘re-directed’ several times from its main mission – the Dimona nuclear reactor.

Moreover, the timing to shoot it down was also important, especially maneuvering it into a less populated land mass.

Most importantly, the drone was shot down, and this was NOT what the other side wanted.

In any case, each time the enemy infiltrates, IDF operators learn the requisite lessons. At the end of this ‘death dance’ this much is known – when the shit hits the fan, as many surprises that Iran’s proxies have, there are scores more from our side.

The world will be duly astonished, and some will be outraged. Too damn bad.

Would there not be MORE to learn from guiding them down (ala the Iranian success) rather than shooting them down? It seems to me that they must be communicated with on a specific radio frequency. Any electromagnetic emanations on that frequency(s) could attract a lot of unhealthy attention. But what do I know?

I doubt Iran had a “success” in guiding a drone down. It is my deepest conviction that obama GAVE (yes-I’m accusing the president of the United States of treason) the thing to them to “level” the playing field.

Not a lot. You are, however, logical. Bolting a camera on a target drone doesn’t change it’s basic nature. It is STILL a target drone. Adding a PGM to go with the camera also leaves it a target drone. Target Drones have been around for a long time. In WW2 the USAAC built armored target drones so their pilots could practice aerial gunnery.
By the mid 50′s ALL the major powers except the Soviets were building them. In Vietnam, the US Air Force started using them for high risk recon missions. I was a go-fer on the D-21 program, which was the first attempt at a stealth crone.
The key point in drone war is the electonics. Recon, Electronic Warfare (EW) and Counter EW are the military reasons for drones today. Politicians like them because when they get shot down, there are no dead bodies being dragged through the street.
And they will get shot down. Thousands of target drones have been blown out of the sky. No target drone has ever shot down a fighter.
Drones are the best weapon when the mission is killing ignorant goat herders.
There is a political advantage to drones besides not having a body or prisoner on display. So far drones are exploiting a grey area in international law. Sending a warplane with a load of bombs into sovereign air space is an act of war. No laws against drones buzzing around.
Drones are only useful against 3rd world countries. I suspect the time lag on shooting down the drone over Israel was caused by the command link lag. The pilot had to get a good visual fix on the drone. That is not always easy, since there are few if any visual references above 20,000 feet. Once he has an eye on it, he has to get weapons release. That can take a while. The chain of command gets longer in peacetime. Once that was received, the pilot sets up for a good gun firing pass and another target drone bites the dust. Eventually there will be laws.
Some dentist fling his family back from the beach in his private plane will bump into a drone and thing will go bad quickly. The media will sense some Ad revenues and some politicians will see an opportunity and that will do it.
Got to love democracy.

The delay also may have to do with the fact that the drone came in over Gaza and you dont want to shoot it down there since you can’t recover the parts.

The Ynet article I read thought it was important that the radars on the planes were able to pick up the signal and that they brought it down with a heat seeking missile which are apparently difficult tasks with small slower moving drones. There is a video so they had visual contact as you say.

Just a guess but the goal was probably get in, snap a few pics of Dimona, get out and brag about it. That did not happen and Israel will be even better prepared next time.

Israel installed another Patriot battery in the North near Haifa shortly after. They claim no connection with the drone but who knows. They may just be getting ready for the US Israel Austere Challenge missile defense exercise in a few weeks.

Using a sidewinder would be massive over kill. Sort of like seeing a cockroach in the sink and going after it with a flamethrower. Yeah, it will do the job, but….
The photo looks like a gun pass. Optimum range for a heat seeker is a Km or so. Gun pass is 200 to 400 meters. It is hard to judge range and separation of 2 objects in the air from a photo. That said the F-16 seems to be a few hundred meters behind and below the drone, offset about 20 degrees, which is the ideal gun position. Also there is no smoke trail from an AAM.
Everybody has a budget (except Obama but that’s a different topic). Even the IAF. IIRC, the 20mm chain gun on the F-16 fires 70 rounds per second on the low speed setting.. That is LOTS cheaper then any sort of AAM. I know pilots and that IAF pilot would have never lived down using a missile on a drone.

Israel basically invented the UAV technology. I recall seeing Israeli firms showing this stuff at a military show some 30+ years ago! The first UAV gear used by the US military were basically Israeli designs.

If anyone knows how to defend against these silly things, the Israelis would.

You’re right. I saw some early Israeli UAVs on display at a military show in the DC area in 1978. The US used jet powered drones during Vietnam but they didn’t have the key element of persistent observation. The US drones were used to overfly heavily defended targets, take a few photos and hope to get out without being shot down.

While the Israelis were effective exploiters of UAVs, the US has been using UAVs for reconnassance and electronic warfare since the Vietnam war (Google Teledyne Ryan Firebee, Fire Fly, Lightning Bug). That Vietnam era stuff included some pretty far out radar stealth and SR-71 type techonology (Google Lockheed D-21 Mach 3 drone). Prior to Vietnam, UAVs were used mainly as target drones. One early pioneer was actor Reginald Denny, whose radio control hobby shop in Hollywood became the Radioplane company in 1940. Marilyn Monroe was discovered there when Denny’s friend Ronald Reagan sent a photographer to the company to get some photos of the assembly line.

Depending on how one defines drones, they predate Israel by several years. using a pilotless aircraft as the determination of “What is a drone”, the first drones were Nazi V-1′s. The Buzz bomb of WW2 fame. Nazi Germany Invented PGM’s. They had in production cruise missiles, air-to air missiles and Anti-tank guided missiles. Given another 8 months to get the wonder weapons into series production and crews trained, they would have won WW2. The 8th Air Force didn’t give them that time. The 8th Air Force kept them pinned down until the Red Army could root them out and kill them.

That is funny. When Iran or Hezzies shoot down a US or Israeli drone it is a “victory”. When Israel shoots down one of theirs, which was spotted and tracked by F-16s before it ever got to Israel it is another Iranian “victory”.

Israel really does not worry about the silly propoganda statements. Proof that Iron Dome does not work? Iron dome has nothing to do with shooting down drones and the enemy would not know if it could or not. The IAF deliberatly chose to track and, if Adina is correct, redirect the drone, so it could be shot down where it would be no danger and the pieces could be recovered. Israel should thank them for the informative live fire exercise. Maybe they could send another when the US shows up for the missile drill later this month.

The real concern is that over time they will get better. Israel developed its own capabilities because they could not readily get them elsewhere and needed to be self sufficient. Iran is capable of the same and are working hard at it. That is why this waiting game is not to our advantage.

Iran is also improving its cyber war capabilities as Panetta warns us in today’s news. Israel is busy beefing up it’s cyber defenses and the US is woefully underprepared. That is critical and a huge gap in our defenses.

Several years ago the Israelis sent drones over the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon. all of them were shot down by the Syrian air defense located there. Great victory. What the Syrians did not realize was that the the drones were sent there to be shot down because before they got hit they had enough time to capture the radar signature of the Syrian air defense and send the information to Israel. When the IAF shortly after took out the entire air defense system of the Syrians the victory celebrations stopped.

So what Iran/Hez learned from the probe is not something we are privy to. We do not know what Israel really learned either.

What we do know is this was real combat real time, minutes to response, to a drone launched from Iran through Hezbolla. We know that Israel tracked the drone while still out over water and launched a ready force of 4 F-16s within minutes. They tracked and destroyed the target at the time and place they chose over an unpopulated area. This happened in short time and unprepared by Israel defence. The timing on Shabbat, wide approach from the Med over Gaza with Dimona as the target, that was carefully planned. Israel showed that they were not sleeping and this is success for Israel by any measure.

I take some comfort in the IAF response. They shot it down without revealing much. Iran cannot go without its lebanese base which is in serious trouble now.

Gee.
Wonder how they came by that technology?
It musta been Bushes’ fault.
How that compassionate conservatism workin’ out, dolt?
Obama is a clear an present danger to billions.
Bush was just his enabler.
America: stop hiring fools for President.
Romney/Ryan.
At least they’re not stupid.

Off the internet? Google it. You can buy a kit and build your own drone. You will have to build in extra range and payload. Not difficult.
The Media goes ape-sh1t over drones. Not sure why. Ignorance is the best I can figure.
Drones are cheap and easy to build. The electronics that make a drone an efficient spy are a different matter. for that 25 million dollar drone, the drone might cost 50K, the AESA radar sized to fit in that drone cost 25 million. So you buy the radar and get the drone free. AFAIK, Iran cannot build any of the parts needed for a AESA or even a PESA.

So basically, that drone has a cell phone duct taped to the bottom of the fuselage, taking pictures and sending them out over the web. That is somewhat simplified but covers the basic idea.
My point is there is nothing high tech about drones. Any second world nation can build them. The bits that go inside are a different issue.

The only reason that we get away with using slow Predators is that the opposition are goat herds.

Any fool can buy a commercial RC, load a few ounces of explosive, and launch it in some random direction. Anything much larger or more actively guided, will be seen and what’s more tracked back to origin.

Here is some interesting news. Some of the goat herders went down to Syria and captured a missile base today:

BEIRUT (AP) — A shadowy jihadi group believed to be linked to al-Qaeda fought alongside rebels who seized a government missile defense base in Syria on Friday,

8. Libertyship46

Iron Dome is a short range system designed to intercept the type of missiles launched from Gaza. It will only shoot at missiles heading for populated areas to avoid wasting the expensive interceptors. In actual combat it has proven a better than 80% success rate.

The long range anti missile system is Arrow, now up to the Arrow-3 version. That has been tested but not in actual combat. This month there is a large US/Israel joint exercise to test the whole missile defense system including the American radar in the Negev and American missile ships in the Med.

Israel also has Patriot missile batteries. They make the SPYDER truck mounted anti aircraft missile system which they have exported to several countries and also the Barak naval anti aircraft missile.

I’m not as concerned about the drone as I am about the many missiles that Hezbollah has pointing right at Israel. With Israel’s fine anti-aircraft defenses and radars, they can probably spot a drone rather quickly and shoot it down. Missiles, though, are a lot faster and a lot harder to shoot down. Add to that the fact that Hezbollah has been given a large number of sophisticated missiles by Iran, and you have a huge threat facing Israel from Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel has that new “Iron Dome” anti-missile system and I really, really, hope and pray that it works as advertised. They’re going to need as much protection as possible real soon, especially if Iran goes nuclear.

If Iran goes nuclear, it won’t be against Israel. That makes no sense. They want to take Israel back, not destroy it. Nukes are really detrimental to real estate values.
Arabs have almost always used indirect tactics in warfare.
If I’m a mullah with one bomb, I use it on Moscow. The Russian think the USA did it and launch on us. The USA launchs back and I sit and laugh like Biden as America and Russia blow each other up. If I have 2 or 3 bombs, I hit New York, D.C. and Houston. All 3 are seaports and a nuke can be sneaked in by fishing boat. New York is the financial center of America, D.C. is the political center and the Houston Refinery Complex (HRC) puts out 75% of America’s refined petroleum products. IIRC about 60% of the worlds.
If I have 6 bombs I break loose the Canary Island shelf and destroy Western civilization. The east coast of America, Southern England, both coasts of France, Spain, Italy. Portagul, and any coast on the med.
Then I hand out 200 million AK-47′s and see how long before Israel runs out of bullets.
Those that think Iran will nuke Israel are just living out their sick anti semitic fantasy. When ever I come across some fool claiming that It’s ok for Iran to get the bomb because the Soviets didn’t use theirs, I point out that IF Iran with a bomb is OK, why don’t we sell them some? They flee after that.

The Iranians are a very smart people, every bit as sharp as the Israelis. They have a lot more to gain by living in peace. It seems that the Likud (pro-Zionist) Party is using the tensions wrt the Iranian nuke development to divert attention from their horrendous treatment of the Palestinians. In Israel I hope that those who strongly desire peace prevail over the rabid Zionists like Netenyahu.

Published on Aug 23, 2012 William Binney is among a group of N.S.A. whistle-blowers, including Thomas A. Drake, who have each risked everything — their freedom, livelihoods and personal relationships — to warn Americans about the dangers of N.S.A. domestic spying; A top-secret program he says is broadly collecting Americans’ personal data.